The gravy spoon, which he had been about to plunge into his mashed potatoes, dripped midway between the bowl and his plate. His wife, Beth, looked out through the screened windows, frowning, as if she wished she had never heard a siren in her life.
Nora, who was eleven, exclaimed, “Brother! You can hear it this time, all right, all right!”
Ted Conner pushed back his chair, stood, started to go, and snatched a fresh roll, already buttered and spread with homemade jam, before his feet took the stairs with the noisy incoherence of a male high school student in a hurry.
Charles, the older son, smiled faintly. This was the first evening of his leave and the first time he’d worn home the proud silver bar of a first lieutenant. The dinner—especially the roast beef which had filled the kitchen with a hunger—begetting aroma all afternoon—was a celebration for him. Now the sound surging over the city would interfere with that homely ceremony. Charles’s smile expressed his regret. “Can I help?” he asked his father, who had risen.
“Guess not. This is a civilian party!” Henry Conner took the stairs in the wake of his younger son, but more deliberately.
“It’s a shame it had to be this evening,” Mrs. Conner said. “Still, Nora and you and I can at least eat.”
“Aren’t you in it?” Charles asked.
“I’m in the First Aid Group, yes. But we don’t have to answer this call.”
Nora, always ready to amplify any subject, her mobile mouth apparently unembarrassed by potatoes, said informatively, “This is just for air-raid-warden practice, and the rescue teams, and cops and firemen, and like that.”
“Nora! Don’t talk with your mouth full. And don’t say, ‘and like that!’ It’s bad grammar.”